The Guam Election Commission needs to work with island lawmakers to finally resolve the problem of crossover voting in primary elections.

When voters choose candidates from different parties, their ballots are spoiled. They're thrown out. They don't count.

In Saturday's Primary Election, 2,369 of 21,275 ballots -- or about 11 percent -- had to be thrown out because of crossover votes. In 2004, there were 2,700 spoiled ballots. In 2006, there were 2,500. In 2010, that number jumped to 4,150 -- or about 14 percent of all votes cast, and some districts had as high as 20 percent of their ballots thrown out.

Lawmakers thought they solved the problem with a law that placed Democratic candidates on one side of the ballot and Republican candidates on the other. But this prevented the Election Commission from placing an independent candidate for Guam delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives on this year's Primary Election ballot, so the law had to be repealed.

Chris Carillo, a Democratic member of the Guam Election Commission's board said something needs to be done to reduce the number of crossover votes.

One way to make this happen is to bring back electronic voting machines, which only allows voters to choose candidates from one political party. Electronic voting was used in 2006, but a law was passed that year that barred the further use of electronic voting machines. That same law allows for electronic voting, provided that: additional training is conducted; an educational campaign is implemented; the machines are tested for accuracy; and there's a redundant paper record of votes cast.

Guam's old electronic voting machines won't work, but there are newer and better electronic voting machines available. If the Guam Election Commission really wants to reduce crossover voting, they should work on either leasing or purchasing one of these new systems for the 2014 Primary Election.

The machines also have another benefit -- they will make it easier and faster for the Election Commission to tally votes.